Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Do As We Say, Not As We Did

That's the message from Democrats, who are preemptively warning Republicans not to attempt to minimize any indictments for perjury or obstruction of justice that may be coming down the pike, given their denunciations of President Clinton, who pretty clearly was guilty of both.

Look. Any accusation of perjury or obstruction of justice is serious business -- and no one on the Republican side will deny it. But having objected to the President's having perjured himself doesn't mean that one isn't free to challenge either the facts or the applicability of the law under which any indictments forthcoming from the Fitzgerald investigation may arise. By the Democrats' logic, if one insisted that O.J. Simpson is guilty, that means one couldn't believe in any other murder defendant's innocence. How silly.

In fact, the most marked difference between the Clinton and the "Plamegate" investigations isn't the Republicans' reaction to potential charges. It's the contrast between the respectful treatment of Patrick Fitzgerald by the Republicans and the Democrats' shameless decision to smear, lie about and trash the character of Ken Starr, a man whose reputation was every bit as stellar as Fitzgerald's -- at least until they got done with him.

Seems to me that if there's the stench of hypocrisy in the air, the Dems had better be looking to themselves -- and not across the political aisle.

4 Comments:

Carol wrote, "Look. Any accusation of perjury or obstruction of justice is serious business -- and no one on the Republican side will deny it."

I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn’t indict on the crime... -- Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R?-TX)

Perjury being properly difficult to prove, Clarke, if charged, would be acquitted. Besides, it is time to stop trying to criminalize political differences, even those flavored, as in Clarke's case, by anger, malice, opportunism and meretriciousness. -- George Will (R? pundit)

To date, then we can remove the Senior Senator for TX and a well known pundit from Carol's list of Republicans. We'll keep track for you, Carol.

You may also want to watch out, your "It's the CIA's fault" spin cuts very close to minimizing what you call "serious business." We would hate to remove you from the ranks Republicans.

I am just going to edit a couple of Carol's comments to make them match reality...

In fact, the most marked difference between the Clinton and the "Plamegate" investigations is that Plamegate involves betraying national security assets during a time of war, whereas Clinton was impeached for a blow job.

Democrats' shameless decision to smear, lie about and trash the character of Ken Starr arose because Ken Starr spent over $50 million of public money, led an investigation that leaked like a sieve in an effort to impose political damage on the Clinton administration, and (although some differ with me on this) was unnaturally obsessed with sex.

On 10/16 George Will asked "what kind of a person in this Fitzgerald, who has spent 22 months of his life chasing a white whale?" Ken Starr had no prosecutorial experience. None. He was appointed after the first Republican prosecutor (Fiske) found nothing. Fitzgerald was selected by an Ashcroft appointee. I am really disapointed in a person of your intelligence being so misleading.